Youth Gang Formation: Basic Instinct or Something Else?

Abstract

As long as people have lived in urban settings, organized criminal gangs have formed. Youth gangs, a special type of organized criminal gang, are made up of predominately male adolescents or young adults who rely on group intimidation and violence. These groups commit criminal acts in order to gain power and recognition, often with the goal of controlling specific types of unlawful activity such as drug distribution. Historically, youth gang formation was attributed to macro-level social characteristics, such as social disorganization and poverty, but recent research has demonstrated a much more complex relationship of interacting factors at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Despite the identification of many of these factors, the journey to gang affiliation is still not well understood. This research, through the application of a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) model, examines the strength and direction of factors such as early pro-social attitudes, high self-efficacy, religious affiliation, perceptions of poverty (relative deprivation), favorable attitudes towards deviance, early onset drug/alcohol use, early onset sexual relations, and their interactive effects on youth gang formation. FCMs are particularly useful for modeling complex social problems because they are able to demonstrate the interactive and reciprocal factors that affect a given system. Using expert opinion, to determine direction and weight of the influence of the above factors, a FCM was built and validated providing support for the use of FCMs in understanding and analyzing complex social problems such as youth gang formation. This study offers insight into how this type of modeling can be used for policy decision-making. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.